Why I went an entire year without posting to my blog
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| Well, I mean, no one reads your blog anyway, right? |
(Planned Parenthood saved my life. The outpatient surgery was
a fraction of the cost at their non-abortion performing clinic compared with other
local providers, and they told me to pay “whatever you can, whenever you can.” Just
a few weeks later, I had another, better job and health insurance).
Back to 2018. The perky medical assistant wheeled up the EMR
cart and said, “I’m going to ask you a few questions about your health.” Sure.
Standard stuff.
Then she asked, “Have you noticed a reduced interest in
doing things that you normally enjoy?”
The question took me aback. This was a gynecological exam. The etymological history of the word hysteria aside, what did my mood have to do
with my uterus?
“Yes,” I responded honestly.
“Are you feeling down, depressed, or hopeless? Have you felt
that way for more than two weeks?”
“Yes,” I replied, “But it’s situational.”
And that situational depression—its causes and effects—is
the reason I haven’t posted to my blog for a year. The situation involves a
loved one, and that loved one has a medical condition for which the main
treatment method involves the word “anonymous.” We don’t talk about it. We
certainly don’t write about it.
After I continued to respond “yes” to each question on a nine-item
depression screening instrument, the medical assistant stepped out to consult
with my nurse practitioner who came into the room with a concerned smile.
“It’s situational,” I told her.
“I get that,” she said. “How long has this situation been
affecting you?”
When did I stop hearing birdsong?
Was it in October, as the leaves changed colors and fell to
the earth, as I grieved my dead father?
Certainly, the “situation” was serious by November, when I
was a keynote speaker for the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental
Health annual conference. It took everything I had to pull on nylons, slip into
my red power dress and navy blue jacket, step on a stage in Houston in front of
hundreds of passionate, powerful mental health advocates, and share my family’s
story. All I wanted to do then was to sleep—permanently. I felt like a fraud.
Everywhere I went in Houston during that trip, I saw ghosts.
In the tunnels, my father, who worked at One Shell Plaza. In the public
library, my teenage self, poring over microfiche news clippings about T.E.
Lawrence’s death (my first published article, in Brigham Young University’s
Insight Magazine, was about Lawrence of Arabia and the problem of modern heroism).
In the theater district, my first love, turning to me with bright eyes at the
fountains beside the Wortham Center after we saw Prokofiev’s Cinderella on my
18th birthday.
No, if I was being honest, the “situation” and my inability
to function at normal levels was probably earlier than that—September 2018, the
start of a new term, when I was eligible to apply for promotion but simply
could not see how I deserved it. What was the point of gathering student evaluations?
How could I possibly write a narrative highlighting my accomplishments in the
classroom when I myself could not see them? Wasn’t I just a burden to everyone?
In hindsight, I think that at least subconsciously, I sensed
some of the warning signs that summer, and I tried to take proactive measures. I
stopped drinking in early 2018 and will never go back. I resumed my regular
yoga practice, lying in corpse pose after a strenuous daily vinyasa flow.
In hindsight, it wasn’t enough.
I was first diagnosed with depression in my senior year of
college, and the illness nearly derailed me. With medication, therapy, and
incredibly supportive friends and family, I was able to persevere and recover,
graduating on time.
When depression struck again during my third pregnancy, I
was forced to confront the fact that my mental health condition might be
chronic. Once again, medication—a risk during pregnancy but a necessary one—stabilized
me.
Before my divorce in 2008, as my marriage was ending, I reached
a crisis point (I talked about this turning point and stepping away from suicidal
ideation in a 2018 Story Story Night performance about semicolons). Yet once I
was on my own, despite the challenges, I felt tremendous gratitude for my life,
for second chances, for my beautiful children. During the years that my son was
sick, I focused my energy on caring for him, and I am so proud of the man he is
becoming today. I was grateful for the opportunities that both Eric and I had
to share our stories of hope and recovery. Eric's awesome TEDx Boise talk has way more views than mine (I call that a definite mom win!).
But as a mental health advocate, I hate to admit that I grew
complacent during that ten-year reprieve about my own mental health.
When did I stop hearing birdsong? All that I know is this:
by the time I took the stage in Houston, I was moving slowly through muffled,
suffocating silence. The air pressed on my skin, creeping, crawling. I could
not escape. What if the worst thing happens? I thought. What is the
worst thing?
I survived. Then December 2018 came. The second week of
December, when I lost hope, again, forever.
I have to be vague because if there’s one thing I’ve learned
in my years of advocacy, it’s that our stories have boundaries. Where does my
story end and where does yours begin? If you want to remain anonymous, do I need to remain
silent too? What am I allowed to say?
I’ve decided after a year of silence that I can talk about
myself—my own experiences. I can say that in the second week of December 2018, I
felt numb, grey, beyond hopeless, because being hopeless would require a
knowledge of its opposite, hope, and those were just four letters on a page to
me, like love, like self. These words had lost their meaning. In my experience
with depression, everything is spoken and heard through thick cotton. Colors fade.
Sleep disappears. Food has no taste. If there are birds, they do not sing.
I can say that this depressive episode was situational, but
I cannot talk about the situation because stories have boundaries, and words
have consequences. I know this more than most people.
I hate December. In my case, the consequences of sharing stories
have involved my worst fears: the loss of my children.
In the second week of December 2018, I had 48 hours to find
a new place to live. Thanks to white privilege and a good credit score, I was
able to do this. And so there I was in my ob-gyn’s office on the last day of
December, flunking a nine-question depression screening.
In 2014, after my book The Price of Silence: A Mom’sPerspective on Mental Illness was published, I had the extraordinary opportunity
to meet with David Pate, then CEO of St. Luke’s, the largest healthcare
provider in Idaho. He asked me, “If you could make one change to our current
healthcare model that would promote mental health, what would you do?”
I answered without hesitation. “Work mental health screenings
into all physical wellness check-ups, from pediatrics on up,” I said. Of
course, there are numerous other things we can do—more hospital beds for psychiatric
care, integrated models of mental and physical health care, etc. But access to
care all starts with knowledge and normalization.
And here I was, four years later, at a St. Luke’s women’s health
clinic, experiencing the integration of a mental health screening in my own
physical wellness check-up.
“It’s situational,” I told my nurse practitioner. “It will
pass.”
“But you don’t have to live like this right now,” she replied.
She touched my arm gently and I burst into tears. Not because I was sad—my depression
is not sadness. Touch—any touch—was painfully intrusive.
She prescribed antidepressant medication, the same one I had
taken during my two previous episodes. The medication worked—I could function
again—but I didn’t feel like myself. I was productive but still emotionless, an
automaton. I could sleep and eat again, but I still couldn’t hear the songs of
birds.
“Let’s try something different,” she said.
We did. And the second medication worked. Everywhere I went,
I felt like I was discovering a new language—the language of the birds. They
were singing to me, warbling the forgotten words: hope, love, self, okay. I was
okay.
I have become acutely attenuated to birdsong.
I have almost completed my promotion packet. Reflecting on my
Fall 2018 semester has instilled me with a sense of humility and gratitude that
makes me a better teacher.
I have accepted that the nameless heartbreak of December
2018 has become a part of me.
The past can’t be fixed, but the future is
interesting to me again. I want to try.
The "situation" is still a major part of my life, and it’s
still anonymous, but I am trying to find ways to reclaim
my own voice. And I’m trying to appreciate this opportunity to practice radical
compassion. I’ve realized that these efforts will be the work of a
lifetime and that as long as some mental health conditions continue to require
silence and shame, our work as advocates must continue.
Mental health is physical health. In 2020, we have work to
do.
